Merkabah: MB 2626 AK 6x6 tipper to expedition truck conversion

[pairospam]

Well, a little more words and pictures.

The races were all good and the bearings were healthy. I took out the pallier as well, with no problem. Pretty much better than expected.



I wrapped the lanes with many rounds of plastic film and went for the components of the braking mechanism. They all looked as they had been at war because of the amount of dirt, grease and rust that was part of them.

It took me quit a while to disassemble the most part of the pieces of the left side and started to clean them up. The dirt piled up even around the smallest part, the retainers were a mess, not to mention the state of the o-rings.




One of those days, I was working on the Merkabah as usual, and when it came the time to leave I realized that my beloved Terrano had been stolen, right in front of the workshop. Ops.

When I bought her I spent four months swapping the engine and upgrading her, and she accompanied me the last five years for almost 250.000 kilometers across Chile and Argentina. I really liked her.



Curiously I took it pretty calmly and those around me felt much worse and sorry and sad and angry and frustrated than myself. The police found her on a solitary street a few days later, completely stripped, but luckily the remainings were almost intact.




I still have the remainings parked at home and I am planning to resurrect her, again.

Maestro Chaleco, a very skilled old man, came to the shop with all his gear and got to fix the dent on the cube with the help of an improvised extractor. Aided by Tito, he warmed up the cube while Tito turned a nut around the bolt. The manoeuvre proved to be easy and successful and the dent was gone with a pop! allowing the cube to be removed at last.




The gears showed some superficial scars but nothing really serious. The axle, in general, was in very good condition and it could still work for many hundred thousands of kilometres.

The right sided components of the brake system were in a very similar condition, even if the amount of grease and dirt seemed to be a little less.

One afternoon the pipes that had been ordered to replace the corroded and badly repaired ones arrived. I put them in, filled the system with antifreezing and made the engine run for a while. Good. No leaks.



Next, I struggled more than a little to unbolt the maxibrakes. Once they were out I disassembled them to check their status that, after thirty years, of course was not the best. The membrane and the rubber parts needed urgent replacement and also the aluminium and the steel needed some cleaning and painting work. I asked for the repair kit everywhere, including the official Wabco dealer, and they could not even find the code for those old things. Soon after I dropped it and asked for new maxis, not Wabco, sadly.

 

[rocrunr]

Really enjoying your camper build! Just a thought I hope you took the plastic wrap of your Blazer it might act as a green house in the sun and build condensation inside the plastic and trap it against the body your trying to protect. Sorry to hear they stole your truck. Nothings safe anymore unless its locked or chained down it seems. Keep up the good work!

 

[theburtseoni]

You are a remarkable person to tackle such a huge job! After seeing what you have acomplished, I will never again feel sorry for myself when tempted to feel overwhelmed by a big or dirty job! I am amazed at how much you have gotten done, you are to be held up as an example of what many of us would like to be and accomplish so I congratulate you! Good job, well done so far!! I am looking forward to seeing more of your build as you get more done!!:bowdown:

 

[pairospam]

Hello again:

I was pretty busy doing many things, some for living, some for fun, and had left a little apart this thread almost unintentionaly.

Many thanks for your words, Theburtseoni. Never feel overwhelmed before doing a big job, just do it after you have made your best attempt with all your heart fruitlessly, and not even then because there surely is another way to do it.

Let’s go on. The rubber pads were practically submerged in rust and it was pretty much difficult to take them out. I spent a lot of time removing the pads and then chiseling the rust out from the supports. Pretty annoying but necessary task, as I said.



Later, when I was brushing the inferior right strut I found out that it was hit and dented in a way that I could not even change the silentblock. The strut was dead. Actually, both struts were dented and bent and the reason for that was a mystery to me. The only thing for sure is that they needed to be fixed or replaced before reassembling.



A few days later I went to see if I could find some replacements in a couple of truck scrapyards near Santiago. Within hundreds of trucks in different states of decomposition there were dozens of struts of different size and color. I asked the big Boss for a little help and at the first attempt I found a Mercedes strut that seemed to be the right one.



After the regular half an hour of crawling and snorting I got a reasonable price, emphasizing that it “seemed” to be the right strut for my truck but I was not sure of that, quiet a significant point for me, not for the man in charge. Then I headed for Melipilla, a city some 60 kilometres away from where I was, to celebrate my father’s birthday, and made the rest of the trip with the famous strut on the hindquarters.



Back at the shop the next day the first thing I did was to compare the new with the ruined strut and, of course, they were not the same. I missed for only 15 milimetres. The guessing was very close, though, but the strut was from another model of Mercedes. God, there were so many!



A little disheartened, I called the Mercedes official dealer asking for the strut and the seller asked for forgiveness before telling me the price, as I should have to sell the whole project to pay for the original piece. No bloody way. Another job, then, for maestro Chaleco. He should have the skills and magic to modify the strut.

Once all the struts were removed I could power brush better the tricky angles and corners of the axle and I did not stop until the metal brushes were completely consumed. The result was very encouraging but there were lots of spots that could not be reached by any instrument, at least not as effectively as I pretended.



Using hammer and chisel I took off every possible piece of rust from the pad supports and power grinded the excess of metal.



I had asked maestro Chaleco to repair the braces for the leafspring packs and the venerable old welder came the next monday and cut some pieces of one inch thick steel to replace the material consumed by the overweighted truck through the last years. Then he welded them to the braces after preparing the site carefully. It looked very good.

Chaleco finished to grind the braces and the welding was cool, but I was not quiet happy with the look so I asked him to let me do the final retouches, as politely as possible. Him, of course, did not mind at all for he knows I am a maniac.




Eduardo and I had a little talk and he convinced to work on both rear axles at the same time. I was a little concerned about the space left to work but of course he was right. So I took all the pieces that were sparse all over the place, wrapped them properly and pilled them up in orderly fashion. Well, more or less…

The next day I hung the #2 axle by the winch and made some not very easy manoeuvres to take it out from under the frame. When the bulky piece of steel was finally out I made some attempts to leave it on the brand new jack stands, but they were so unstable that I ended up putting the axle on the trestles.

 

[pairospam]

When inspected carefully, the axle seemed to be dirtier than the #3 axle, if that was ever possible, and of course both braces were a mess and needed urgent repairing; the rubber pads were not recoverable. There was a leak from the front shaft, probably from a defective retainer. Hmm…

I cleaned superficially the axle from the thick layer of grease and dirt first. It was not as easy as it sounds because the dirt was very tough and the bolts and nuts were heavily stuck. I had to sweep the floor a couple of times to go on.

Just cleaning the axle and removing the struts took many hours of heavy work. Next morning I arrived pretty early and changed clothes quickly to attack the axle before maestro Chaleco arrived to fix the braces. I removed the right drum brake and the hub and everything seemed to be okay, but when I took out the left side brake drum I found that it was all soaked in oil. Ops. More to clean.



The rear shaft retainer also leaked so I had not choice: I would have to remove the shafts and change both retainers, at least that. I hoped that it would be not as difficult as it seemed.



Do you remember the rear leafsprings, those massive arrays of steel, hard as rocks? Well, the idea was to remove some leaves as the maximum payload they were supposed to stand in the future would be five tonnes instead of twenty six. I needed to remove them also to fix the leaks from the retainers on the right side pivot and from the gasket on the left side.

I was using fruitlessly a very long lever to loose the nuts of the U brackets when Chaleco approached and told that it was necessary to apply a little heat and there would be “no problema!”. With the torch he heated up the nut and then I slowly applied cold water with a piece of cloth, and it came out with a minimal effort. The one who knows, he knows.

But after removing the U brackets there was a big clang! as the forward half of the main leaf fell to the floor; it was broken, and who knows from when. Another little movement and the center bolt of the spring came out, broken as well.



When all the leaves of the spring were removed the dirt and the rust of the centuries showed up. There was a central groove that was filled by an actual cast of rust of the place. I spent a lot of time digging in and chiselling out the rust from the hard-to-reach corners, cursing Mercedes Benz for leaving such a dead end place to collect water and mud.



I continued with the stony dirt that filled the grooves of the yoke. At that point the amount of dirt under the truck reached many kilograms, and I am not joking.



The left side leafspring was removed using the same technique. The center bolt was also broken and there was also a cast of rust and dry mud in the groove. I repeated the cleaning operation and I finished late that afternoon, with my hands aching and tingling, but really happy.

The next morning the scheduled task was to check the inner state of the yokes. I assumed that the oil had never been changed, and I was right. At the removal of the cover some awkward, dark and viscous material came out from the interior, revealing also that the level of the fluid had been lesser than recommended for an undetermined number of years and that the superior roller bearings were superficially rusted.



There was a huge blocking nut and of course I had no such a large socket at hand, so I took a piece of beam and draw an hexagon on the surface. Then I cut it with the power grinder and reinforced the beam with some welding. The new tool came out pretty good and precise to the millimetre. The problem was that the nut loosed clockwise and I found it out after trying hard to do exactly the opposite. Ops.



Anyway, the nut came out and with the aid of Tito and Eduardo I took out the yoke and the bearing and luckily there seemed to be no damage to both the inner and the external bearing nor to the races, only a lot of ancient filthy oil and rust stain as Chaleco pointed out. Cleaning would be the key and changing the retainers would be mandatory.

 

[pairospam]

What about the left side? Was it necessary to disassemble the whole thing even if the leaking came from the external gasket? Of course! I was already there and, besides, I wanted to use the “new socket” again. So I removed then the cover and the oil was slightly better looking than the one on the right. I removed the yoke with some help and the situation was pretty much the same: there was no damage to the moving components and only cleaning would be necessary. The races were looking not precisely healthy after a deep cleaning, though. The new retainers would have to do their job pretty well.




When I finished my homework Chaleco had finished his own and all the four braces were repaired. He had made a pretty good welding job, as usual, but he also grinded with great attention, as in a sort of veiled competition with me, I presume.



When he left that afternoon I took again the power grinder and polished the four braces, both faces, and the rails until I thought it was enough - and until everybody at the shop asked me to stop with the bloody noise and the sparks.



During that weekend I did not even thought about the truck and stayed in bed until midday.

I got four maxibrakes to replace the older ones from the alternative store in Santiago. It actually made no sense to put any time and energy into their repairing for the cost of new ones was pretty low, even if the quality was not the same as the original. The seller found the proper ones according to the sample but the axle-nut was slightly thicker, hmm… Maestro Chaleco’s task.

The plan with the rear axle struts consisted in cutting both the old struts saving the straight and good halves and weld them together, making one strut from two. We made a sort of matrix with the long strut and after cutting the old ones Chaleco welded the pieces aligning them in the matrix and putting a piece of a cardan shaft as inner guide. Ahh… Chaleco and his magic touch! After he welded I grinded and sanded and no one will ever say that the strut was ever repaired. Good.




I wanted to install a central tire inflation system (CTIS) on the Merkabah and I initially thought to build my own rotary valves because the ones in the market were expensive and hard to find. I quit after spending some time, energy and ink when I realized that I needed to develop complex technologies that I was not called to develop at all on my own.

I found a CTIS model that I really liked because of its low profile and for the experience of the maker in the military industry and in the Dakar rallies. I included the rotary valves on the model to see how would they look like. Cool, and almost invisible. There would always be the risk to hit the rotors against a trunk or a rock or against the toll, but life is hard and the system would not allow the pressure to escape from the tire. Good. I asked for a quote: OMG!




My father’s light-duty 15 years old sandblaster arrived by bus one day. The device was a quiet simple concept, but the concerns about the right type of sand to blast with and the protection needed were not minor. Anyway, many days passed before I could even step into the workshop.

 

[Deleted member 9101]

For what its worth, CTS is over rated.

 

[LoRoad]

I think it's really crazy the amount of time you spend sharing things with all of us here. But I'm also really glad you do.

 

[julius0377]

Thanks

Following your build thread with great interest, you are an inspiration

 

[pairospam]

Jnich77 and Joaquin:

I understand that CTIS may seem over rated for some people, but for those who go around the world on bikes or even on their own foot, any expedition vehicle is an exageration, not to speak about Casa Azul or a monstruous 12 ton 6x6 truck for only two people. Anyway, everybody knows how different a vehicle performs when running on sand or mud with low psi, and how easily can you get out of trouble managing the tire pressure. The thing is that managing the pressure of six 14.00R20 tires can be quiet demanding in terms of time and effort; just imagine trying to deflate from 100 to 20 psi all the tires in the middle of a subzero snow storm at 4500 meters at noon on the altiplano in the middle of Los Andes mountains. It has happened. Or imagine yourself stuck in the middle of a pack of hyennas or in the territory of a family of lions in the Serengheti.

I want to tour the world, alone, and I like to go offroad pretty much, so any little gadget is welcome if it can help me save the day. For instance, I have a winch on the front and one on the rear, but if possible I would prefer not to use them, not once, but there they are, just in case.


LoRoad:

The big job is already done; glad to share.


Julius0377:

Thanks to you.

 

[Ozrockrat]

Having ridden around the Chilean deserts I think CTIS would be a real asset. Is it possible to unplug that system when you will be traveling through wooded areas and reinstall when hitting the deserts, beaches or mountain passes?

 

[Deleted member 9101]

I want to tour the world, alone, and I like to go offroad pretty much, so any little gadget is welcome if it can help me save the day. For instance, I have a winch on the front and one on the rear, but if possible I would prefer not to use them, not once, but there they are, just in case.


.

Hey, if you think it is worth it, go for it. It has been my experience that driver skill or pre-planning can eliminate the need for it. I have driven 80,000 pound rigs through flooded sod farms on "street tires," you just have to know your vehicle and its limits.

Also be sure you have a way to cap it off when it breaks or you snag an air line. I have seen air lines completely ripped off before.

But anyways, I looove your build man. I definitely enjoy the up dates

 

[jgpoirier]

WOW! This build is absolutely incredible! Your attention to detail and patience is remarkable, keep it up! Looking forward to updates

 

[k9lestat]

subscribed

 

[Czechsix]

Subbed, you're doing great work, hang in there!